Keeping it together

The handbag I will grab when I am on my way out the door depends on what I’m wearing, where I’m going, and sometimes what the weather is like, but the essential things I need usually remain the same. This means that I could be running through the door, quickly changing my outfit, and blindly grabbing things out of the current bag and moving them into the new bag as I am tracking the bus on my phone. It’s not uncommon that I’ll grab something I don’t need, or that I’ll miss and not grab what I do need.

This calls for a small purse pocket. And since my sewing machines are both out and set up (sewing Christmas gifts), I decided to give it a go with the fat quarter fabrics and batting (stabilizer) I have on-hand. My sewing skills are a little rusty, so I wasn’t about to attempt a project involving zippers or button holes. I didn’t have any velcro handy, so that left me with a cord around a button. I have tons of buttons! I had some elastic, but it was too thick, so I made a fabric cord.

I felt the infusable stabilizer was necessary to give the pouch some shape and structure. I used Pellon 809, but you could use cotton batting or more layers of fabric to achieve a similar effect. The project doesn’t take very long, if you don’t screw up the placement of the cord, like I did originally. Even then, it’s only a small portion of the project that you have to redo, so I’ve drawn out the placement for future reference. The most time consuming part of the project was threading the serger!

If you do not have a serger, you can set your sewing machine to the zig-zag stitch for a similar effect. Alternatively, you don’t have to do any fancy stitch at all – just a regular straight line stitch will do as well. Note that you will be sewing through six layers of fabric, so don’t rush. You don’t want to break any needles!

I deliberately made this a small pouch, just big enough to fit my essentials. This is what the pouch looks like with the four items.